Nymphetamine
by Razorblade Mistress
Summary: "This is the vision that blesses me when I say the name Gon Freecss: a petite, tanned figure perched upon a rock with his carelessly bruised knees drawn to his chest and his elbows propped against his knees..."- These are the confessions of Fumu Saito.


**A/N: ****This is... not usually the type of subject matter that I write. I would not at all be offended if you left.**

* * *

Gon Freecss had grown a great deal by the time we met last, but always there remained in his smiling eyes the light and lure of all a child's wonder and demanding. In my mind's eye I can see him even now; inhaling the sights and sounds of the world through a filter so utterly simple and yet so bewilderingly complex that my adult brain could not even begin to properly register it beyond the likes of a long forgotten (but ever so slightly remnant) dream.

This is the vision that blesses me when I say the name Gon Freecss: a petite, tanned figure perched upon a rock with his carelessly bruised knees drawn to his chest and his elbows propped against his knees. In his tiny grip he holds a fishing pole. Despite his dogged determination, his bright eyes dull every now and then as his thoughts wander here or there. His fists tighten every so often as the sun makes its rounds to that harmonious angle where his face bathes in golden hues and the shadows shrink back and do little to add any depth or illusion to his young, dirt-stricken face. His long, dark lashes tint an unnatural blonde in the afternoon rays. Uneven patches of his youthfully full lips are stained burgundy from the berries he has consumed in lieu of the respectable breakfast that he bypassed the majority of, and the colour bleeds faintly from the corners of his mouth. He scratches at the thin scabs that cover his arms; caused by hanging branches or claws accidentally caught against flesh while wrestling with his animal companions. His grass-stained, white shirt has several mended and re-stitched sections (some overlapping) as proof of previous innocent abuses.

This is Gon Freecss when he is nine years old. This is the image I will always conjure up (whether consciously or otherwise), when remembering Gon Freecss.

I actively reach for this still picture quite often. I like to try to project it behind my eyes onto the inner side of the lids, where my beautiful and terrible secret can both be displayed before me and hidden from the workings of the conventional mind. That is the way that it must be, and I have long accepted this as the truth of my reality and the terms of my own eternity. If no next life or judgment day awaits me, I am confident that I have suffered for my misdoings (or "misfeelings" as some might recklessly and wrongfully label them as) in this realm of existence enough so to deem it "damnation" in its own right.

…But I am getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should think to begin at the beginning. By this, I mean the beginning of _my_ story as opposed to the beginning of fire and passion and love (which Gon shall hold his place, in a sense, as both the beginning and the end of for far longer than one could reasonably stand to physically exist). We shall get to that, I assure you, dear reader. My story however, begins about four years previous to the birth of my beloved.

* * *

Long before Gon was but a gleam in his father's eye, there was another. It was not premeditated in any form, to be clear, as Kenta (the youngest son the neighboring family) and I were less than a handful of years alive and simply curious (as is not uncommon). It is, admittedly, startling how vague my recollection of his features in the later years of our time together is, but in form of the child that he was I can recall Kenta with frightening clarity. He was a particularly short boy for his age and noticeably stout, with abnormally large brown eyes and a bowl cut. He typically wore camouflage print (though often in colours that one would be ill-advised to wear if in need of actual concealment) and pants that were always rolled up and stitched at the bottom (as they were too long for his short legs, and his mother held the philosophy that his elder brother's hand-me-downs would suffice). His plump face flushed with constant pink undertones, and his thick lips glistened unrelentingly with excess saliva.

Our intimacy was profusely innocent. I feel that I cannot stress this enough, as I can only imagine among you the "amateur psychologists" which will immediately assume that Kenta somehow abused me during our times of exploration or that these events led to some overtly sexual experience. Likewise, no similar such situations were replicated within my family or any other such third parties. I am sorry if this disappoints you, but Kenta and I were simply two typical children investigating the differences between typical children. If you were hoping to find some epiphany-evoking clues towards the mystery of the fuel which feeds the fire of my loins… you will not find them here.

It is quite incredible that Kenta and I were never caught during our meetings, as we knew no shame for our actions and did not think or understand to be especially discreet. A small, inquisitive touch or kiss here or there (which I cannot recount now to you accurately in detail and without the tainted view of adult, preoccupied lust) gave way to a steady increase of familiarity of either or both. There was a point that it became suddenly obvious that what we experienced with one another should not be openly shared with any and all, but I am failing to attach any specific memory of when or how. Over the span of many years, we came to understand without words and through only that unspoken, friendly bond that young children have with one another that he was mine and I was his.

I believed, at the time, that we could easily spend an eternity- perhaps two- contented and unofficially committed (lacking, of course, the means to effectively translate such). I could, to be clear, elaborate endlessly on the subject of a young Kenta and I. Rather; I _could have_ done so if these years had not ultimately gained place as predecessors to my encounters with another (Takeo) and then later my beloved (Gon). Suffice to say that Kenta and I had a wonderful stretch during that first term (that I shall never think less than fondly of) before we had finally "run our course," as the expression goes. Those days, as surely you had deduced before even I had started describing them, did not stand the test of time.

A few months following my tenth birthday, my mother fell fatally ill. When I say this, I do not mean to imply that she passed soon after, but quite plainly that she was diagnosed with a terminal disorder. My days of simplicity soon gave way to long, grueling hours as something of a handmaid for my poor, sickly mother. My father, who never managed to hold any single occupation for a considerable period, spent more time than usual working. All too quickly the days of much anticipated leisure dissipated in wake of necessity. The dreamy pastels of my world too soon calloused and turned to muted, chiseled down marble.

By the time I had finally passed the threshold into adolescence, something more was troubling me. Kenta was changing; his interests and personality were evolving. He, with whom I spent all of my few spare moments in the company of, no longer held that lure and that light that had always drawn me to him before. Having spent years at the aid of my mother (and otherwise with Kenta) I was essentially companionless. Thus, I had no reasonable excuse to avoid him… initially, at least.

"Tutoring?" he'd repeated back to me over the telephone line, a hint of mockery in his newly blossoming baritone.

"Mother suggested it."

I did not bother to add that I'd have accepted nearly any offer to spend my precious minutes isolate of him (and that this feeling only grew with each supplementary offering of 'maturity' that he displayed…though perhaps ironically I use the term loosely).

"We don't spend much time together these days."

His tone was both unimpressed and condescending.

"I can't bring myself to argue with her about helping others with their education, especially not in _her_ state." (It was, as you see, the perfect alibi.)

Silence on the line. Finally, a short, disgruntled sigh came as a response.

"I guess we'll just have to _find_ time…"

"We will."

My voice was certain, but I was hoping rather desperately that we wouldn't…

* * *

The tutoring sessions proved to be a wonderfully effective means for occupying my time and keeping Kenta well at bay. He did not, to my great relief, even bother calling much anymore. The downside was, of course, that acting as a complementary grammar and mathematics instructor for grade school-level courses was hardly my version of "ideal". The saving grace was easily the children themselves, who soaked in the details of the world around them and then recounted said details with little to no concept of the societal norm's "decency filters". In this sense, I found some small amount of warmth and amusement that I was otherwise lacking.

It was a dusty Saturday in early June when I was sent to the home of Takeo; an eight year old boy who was miserably failing more than a few subjects. His parents were (at the time of our meeting) my father's bosses, though their business I cannot be bothered to recall. What did I teach Takeo over this span? Again, it does not matter enough to remember.

What does matter is that when I entered the home for the very first time, his mother (who appeared suspiciously young, looking back on it now) smiled and invited me in with a smooth wave of her arm and then called up the winding, pearl staircase to dear Takeo.

"I'm playing a game!" was the indignant response.

"We have company. Your tutor is here; please come downstairs."

"What?"

"Your tutor is here!"

"Tell her to come back when I'm done."

'Mother Takeo' shot me a nervous grin and offered me a seat on the couch. I unloaded the contents of my side-slung bag onto the coffee table as the exchange continued; this time with the woman's feet planted on the first two steps and hands firmly gripping the railing.

"It's not very nice to make people wait."

"You make me wait for things."

"That's different. Come downstairs."

"How is it different?"

I politely pretended not to notice as she glanced over her shoulder at me and then dashed up the stairs. A door opened and closed. Aggressive murmurs could be heard (and the occasional prepubescent "That's not fair!" or "I hate you!") from the upper floor. A few minutes later, the sound of exaggerated stomping echoed and headed towards and then down the stairs, the footfalls growing louder with each descent.

"What do you say, Takeo?"

"_Hi_," he said, spitting out the greeting as though it was the most distasteful thing he'd ever been forced to say.

I turned to see a small body shrunken inward in a display of proud defiance, arms folded and tucked tight to the chest. The lips were especially plump while locked into a sour pout, and the pale skin of his face was almost completely pinched red with his energetic (but otherwise generally restrained) annoyance. His too-large, fully sleeved and striped shirt was drooping off the left shoulder, exposing a tense, round ball of smooth flesh. His cropped, dirty blonde hair was a tangled mess; as though his emotional upset had managed to dishevel his physical appearance. He was a saucy, typical, little boy…

…And he was beautiful.

An excitement I had thought long abandoned shot through me and for a moment I was helpless to respond. To my good fortune, his mother was not finished with him quite yet.

"That's not what we discussed."

"_Sorry_," he growled.

"No. Sorry for _what_?"

"_Sorry_ for making you _wait_."

"It's no trouble," I insisted, luckily sounding far more relaxed than I felt.

I attempted to ignore the sound of my pulse in my ears, though my intentions proved something of a failure as the beating was thunderous enough that I did not properly hear the remaining conversation. I made a point to steady myself and keep a detailed record of the back and forth progression as to which set of lips were moving (rather than trace the outline from Takeo's scrunched up nose to his upper lip with my eyes, as foolishly tempting as it was).

At the time, I was certain of a few things, as it were. I knew that Kenta was rapidly shedding everything that had once held me effortlessly to him. I knew that I was weary and burnt out on the weight of my constant responsibilities. I knew also that Takeo had, in an instant, reclaimed all these things that I had been so sure were forever lost.

There were, likewise, plenty of things that I did not know at the time. I did not know that Kenta had long lost interest in me as well, and thus my spare time did not really need to be filled so constantly. I did not know that my father was already working out a contract for another job elsewhere for the summer months. I did not know that Takeo would not be the last.

Of course, dear reader, you can well assume that I had absolutely no way at this point of knowing about Gon.

As it so happened, my infatuation with Takeo was about to see as abrupt an end as it had a beginning. Oh, but not _quite_ yet, dear reader, as first there were a few very distinct… _instances_… that occurred.


End file.
